6 thoughts on “Welcome”

The approach described in these pages is to directly control the DSP with the micro in real time. This is a much more flexible approach than simply using SigmaStudio to load a self-boot EEPROM. This approach allows much more flexibility in designing the system tools and user interface–this will be clear when the article on ASD is posted. The approach also allows us to use a wide range of hardware, including the $20 Sure ADAU1701 board, the miniDSP board, or custom designs that are available in the download section. Unfortunately, the freeDSP board is hard-wired to use self-boot mode, so this approach is not compatible with the freeDSP board 🙁

I totally welcome and agree about the aim of this collaborative project. I think, the freeDSP project is not a competitor but a good complement. =) It is focused on open DSP hardware and all boards are released with sources in GitHub. They can be easily modified and build by the community to fit your application, e.g. to boot directly to slave mode. There are also several extension boards (additional IOs, amplifiers, …) and more powerful DSP boards coming soon (with ADAU 1452, e.g. the PiDSP for Raspberry Pi stacking). To make boards compatible (e.g. using a standard I2S connector for extension boards) might be a benefit for the whole community. If you like, you could think about contributing your hardware design to the freeDSP repository. This way both projects can benefit from each other.

During startup, the current freeDSP CLASSIC acts as MASTER on the data bus and loads the memory and register contents from the connected eeprom. After the data is loaded it sets itself to SLAVE mode. Fabian contributed a comprehensive getting started guide on “Serial communication with the freeDSP” using an Arduino example, which is linked in the “Application notes” section of freeDSP.cc. However, the designs are open source and can be copied and modified to suit your needs. =)

The Audiodevelopers effort is not focused on hardware development, although there will be a number of “specialized” hardware designs posted. The primary reason for avoiding hardware kits or other products is that large commercial producers like Sure Electronics can sell a complete ADAU1701 board for $20, and it makes no sense to compete with that. I’ll be posting some DSP designs with integrated amplifiers and some other designs that work well for active speakers, and if somebody wants to take those designs and market them, that’s fine with me.

It’s true that the Arduino software described on these pages can work with the freeDSP Classic board, as long as the design does not use the write-back feature. See this link for more info: https://ez.analog.com/message/14318#14318

At this point I’m only comfortable with giving code to those who ask personally (send me email). Much of the code was done quickly and it needs another cycle of refactoring before it is something I would want to publish. However, there always seems to be other development efforts that push a code publishing effort down on the priority list. Also, there is a lot of code–I had to switch from a teensyLC as my “go-to” CPU to the teensy3.2, as there is now more than 65K of code. The code that interfaces to the ADAU1701 is relatively small–probably two pages at the most. If that is all you are interested in, send me an email at administrator@audiodevelopers.com with a description of what you are trying to accomplish with the code.
The code and roadmap for new development efforts and possibly publishing the code are described in this article.